California weaver (New Pleistocene)
Notable amount of following information for the species is compiled by using information from the wikipedia.org site. The link to the original species article is here. California weaver (Ploceus communis) - A descendant of village weavers that were introduced by some bird keepers during the Last World War. They are found throughout California, not just redwood rainforests. They are similar to their ancestors. Biology and reproduction Due to California being an island and the descendants of the village weavers adjusting to the rainforests only recently (despite being in California much earlier due to being introduced by humans), the island gigantism rule has affected them a little, making them grow about 34 cm from their beak tips to tails as opposed to their previous height of 15 - 17 cm. The males and females of California weaver still share few plummage differences like the male plummage being dark and yellow while female's are grey and yellow. The male's dark feathers have become comparatively smaller and a bit spread out (theory being that their feather color ratio stayed largely the same while their size grew). The juveniles retain their largely brown toned color scheme but now with a more red-like hue. During reproduction period, C. weavers are the most active similarly to their ancestors and they nest in colonies. Their nest is a more poorly-made version of their village weaver nests due to the redwood needles not being quite as good of a building material and of limited flexibility. C. weavers eventually started to strengthen their nest stability with a bit of resin, but the problem often remained as redwood is known for being a conifer with relatively small amounts of resin. The redwood needles have their plusses though, they are able to intersect so the California weaver nests end up having cross knit patterns here and there. C.weavers used their feet and beak to connect the branches and needles. Both male and female participates in making nest as the process isn't easy. Sometimes even a neighboring weaver joins in if it sees obvious stress in it's neighbors. Behavior and ecology As cooperative as California weavers seem around each other they are not as friendly to most other flying Redwood rainforest species. This is theorized to be due to the fact that compared to most other birds California weavers are quite the newcomers. As a result, they develop internal insecurity due to ending up in an environment already claimed by other birds and seeing it as a threat to their species future survival. So they lash out at other bird species with snaps and intimidation gestures such as puffing up and delivering loud buzzes and chatters with sharp pausing (similarly to a dog's bark). But they rarely engage in physical bullying because it leads to the increased aggresion of the other birds which then retaliate and may win due to having larger experience of the biome they live in. Adult California weavers feed on seeds and grain, but will look for insects when they're more famished or need to feed it's young. It opts to pick up redwood cones it can carry and may shake them around to loosen the cones seals which causes at least some seeds to get distributed around the environment. Evolution Village weavers were already introduced to California by humans but they happened to fly around other parts of the island and settled in the redwood rainforest only later. It could be due to the fact that the original habitat of a village weaver were open/semi-open habitats as well as African woodlands which largely lacked conifers. So the village weaver only gradually settled in the redwood rainforest and the slow adaptation process to the environment caused them to gradually grow in size due to the new food sources and possibly smaller factors such as the larger birds being more successful in getting to reproduce. As mentioned above, the evolution also caused less pleasant interactions to happen such as the normaly social village weavers descendants to end up quarreling with a lot of other rainforest aerial species. Category:Animals Category:Birds Category:California Category:New Pleistocene Category:Omnivores